I love ducks

Here's an outline of my routine for the last couple of days:

• Go into uni bright and early to work on management assignment
• Procrastinate wildly
• Get fizzled out inside brain from intensity of procrastination
• Go to Western Park
• Watch ducks

 Okay let's talk about ducks. I guess the conversation should be prefaced by the author's acknowledgement that ducks are basically a massive lie: they seem cute / serene, but they're actually brutally violent animals with very liberal views on sexual consent. Just the other day I had to intercept a brutal duck murder in which several ducks had formed a kind of convoy around a larger duck, and were taking it in turns to force its head under the water.

My favourite duck looks like this:

 It's about half the size of all the other ducks, and basically has no neck - its head is just like a tiny dome coming out of its duck body. Sometimes it stands up and quacks really loudly for like ten seconds. I think there's a boy duck (green head) of the same weird small duck kind, so I guess they're a couple. That duck is my favourite duck.

If you watch ducks diving from above (like on a bridge or something) you can really appreciate how very hydrophobic they are. The water just rolls right off them. Apparently it's because they're always lathering themselves with special duck oil. I think saw a goose preening and crying simultaneously once, which led me to assume that their duck oil comes out of their eyes. The internet says that all waterfowl get their oil from a gland in their tail, so I guess the goose was just sad.

(Reconstruction)

I tried to sneak up on sleeping ducks today, but I think they sleep with their eyes open or something. Sometimes when they're asleep you can see the whites of their eyes, which is kind of scary.

I've got a new board game, it's called Diplomacy and I'm very excited about it. It's like Risk, except it's a well designed game and it takes so long that the rule book tells you that it's okay for the game to end in a mutually agreed four way draw if everybody gets bored. I'm playing it this Saturday and I'd like to see it through to completion, but that might be ambitious because I'm going to a wild party in the evening.

I'm not sure why I find this so exciting

Of course, before the party and the board games and the church family brunch and the train and the cat and the further board games and the reunion with the biological family and the celebration of the resurrection and hopefullly even a makeshift sunrise service, there's the MGT389 deadline. This has been my final act of procrastination, I hope you have enjoyed it.

It's pancake day today

Extract from a Trump rally:

" I love you. [unintelligable nonsense] I LOVE YOU! [enthusiastic sentimental drivel]"

Me talking to my cat: see above. Both events may be punctuated by unsettling attempts to kiss a begrudging or indifferent party. If my cat were with me now, nesting impractically and adorably atop my revision notebook, I would pick her up, cradle her in my arms and whisper softly into her ear:

"Who's going to pay for the wall?"

My cat is not here. I must get back to work.


UPDATE:

I did go back to work. I went back to work with such vigour and dedication that I could find no time to write my blog. The exams are over now, and all is well. So far this semester I have missed no less than 100 percent of my lectures. I spent a significant portion of the morning transcribing my academic timetable onto a blank page at the back of my diary.

I've got a diary now. Before I had a diary, I used to think that owning a diary would change my life. I imagined that somehow the act of writing two word sentences into an A7 booklet would transform the outward realisation of my very character, effectively metamorphasising me into a new, better, more reliable, less confused young man.

As it turns out, all of these imaginings were demonstrably justifiable. Gone is the David Lovell of yesteryear, whose immense popularity and underwhelming organisational skills tragically conspired to condemn him to an eternity of double bookings and forgotten rendevous. And where is the bumbing yet affable gentleman who would neglect to attend events at which he had every intention of appearing, and then fret concerning the implication of his abscence in the minds and hearts of his friends? By these same friends he will be dearly missed. He is no more, and in his place stands a mysterious, somewhat dashing figure with unnerving foreknowledge, constantly consulting a dog-earred book that charts the phases of the moon, into which he inscribes illegible glyphs that are said to reveal the very future.

I went to a lecture this morning in which the lecturer attempted to use a google document as a form of responseware. Obviously it was totally useless for that purpose, but it worked well as a public forum via which we collectively expressed our disdain at having to endure yet another management module, and our love of willy emoticons. Weirldy, she just left it running for a full five minutes, during which we were basically rendered unresponsive by our childish hysterics.

okay bye

Things I Say to my Cat

"Hello Mrs"

"Do you smell of biscuits?"

"Are you a biscuit baby?"

"I love you."

"You smell like biscuits."

"Hello pretty."

"You are cuteiful"

Perhaps my cat's only real shortcoming is her inability to appreciate a good portmanteau. She really is very lovely. Sometimes she does smell a bit biscuity. I don't know if we started getting a new brand of cat biscuits or something, but when she brushes her tiny chin against my nose, it's smells like biscuits. There you go.

Cats are the ideal recipient of small talk. Talking to a cat is like a form of lingual catharsis, in which your words needn't actually be words, excessive intonation is justifiable and nothing you say is of any real benefit to either party. Claire Lovell gets quite annoyed sometimes when I talk to the cat. The cat also gets annoyed sometimes.

Yesterday over dinner, my mum explained to us all that when I was two I came out in a rash on account of having three adult portions of bran flakes in one sitting. Apparently the rash changed places, fading spectrally from one area to another without explanation. When questioned regarding the medical validity of this account, Mum relayed to us that she took me to see the doctor, who is reported to have looked me over and said something along the lines of : "Yeah, that's bran flake rash."

Wow, that was all quite boring. I'm sorry readers, but my desire to maintain the blog does not have any bearing on the inescapable dullness of my present circumstances. I'm becoming quite diligent. It's sort of rewarding, but it's not very interesting.

Not Quite Perfect

Oh hello.

I watched 'Pitch Perfect' yesterday. I think Matt Hobbs recommended it to me. He will answer for this.

Pitch perfect tries to be ironic in places, but it cannot escape from what it is. It's a film about university students, aimed at kids who can't wait to be university students. As such, the protagonist (whose name I forget) has all the smug self-importance of your average fourteen year old, who believes themselves to be ineffably unique to all other human beings, and for whom self expression and / or discovery are seemingly the end goals of all sentient life. Masterfully balancing angst and apathy, Barbara (it was something like that) is so unbelievably boring that I can't really be bothered to dislike her. At one point she goes to a party, and just stands there parading her lack of excitement as though it were genuinely a virtue.

My other big qualm with this movie is that all East Asians are depicted as psychotic / uncaring. Literally all of them. The only lesbian in the film is continually looking for excuses to assault her co-eds. I don't mean to sound like the mushy liberal that university is slowly turning me into, but this whole film is about being free to express your true self, so long as your individuality is merely perceived, but you don't actually deviate from the norm of white, straight, irritating teenager.

Final Score: 2/5 'Mildly entertaining in places, but neither subtle nor shocking. A tedious film. The singing is good obviously.

For all of it's flaws, I will credit PP with reminding me what an absolute banger this tune is:

Let's review something else. Let's review my new board game 'Dead of Winter':

It's a very good board game.

10/10 would review again.

That's the end of the review section of today's blog. Possibly the end of today's blog.

Yes.

B.o.B will play us out with this number one jam on the transient nature of worldly gain, and the importance of an assurance of salvation.

Thanks, Bob.

Don't worry kids, I think the blog will be back again very soon. This was just a warmup maybe. If you need me, I'll be playing Left 4 Dead.

Hands Falafels Weddings

Hello everyone. It's been an exciting week.

I threw a falafel party.

It was possibly the first truly successful social event I have ever hosted. 50% of the playlist was purchased in a charity shop the day before the event, and literally the only thing we did was eat falafel. Economical, simple, delightful. Falafel is the future of parties. It's incredibly easy to make. I have been envisioning a future in which all parties invovle a large amount of falafel, and it is beautiful.

I went to a wedding.

My cousin got married, which was great. I saw my sisters, which was great.

Lost my hat.

Still love weddings. All the Lovells of my generation are married now, excepting myself, my sisters, and a couple of cousins, including this handsome rogue:

The pretty one (on the left)

Get in touch if you're interested, I'll see what I can do.

Even my course has been pretty interesting lately. I've been learning about Biomechatronics. Today I read a paper about the long term ethical concerns of Brain-Computer Interfacing. Will human beings share a hive mind? Will our earthly minds become eternal? Will society be divided into two classes of being? Is it wrong to kill bees? Is there a bee heaven?

My friend Henry is going a kill a queen bee today. He says it's for the 'good of the hive'. He's beginning to sound like a bee.

Would you like to know about a lab I did the other day? 

You definitely do.

It's about the myoelectric signals that control your fingers.

Here is the signal:

 Here is the signal reflected in the x-axis, filtered to eliminate its high frequency component, and normalised (amplified by a constant so that the maximum amplitude is 1):

 Here is an overlay of the corresponding muscular force data, and the computed predicion of muscular force based on a mathematical model that relates the normalised, full wave rectified, low-pass filtered electromygraphic signal to muscular force.

They're pretty similar. That's good news because it means that we can use surface electrode data from somebody's arm to control a prosthetic hand. It's not actually quite that simple, and it gets wibbled around when you do it in real time, but it's getting better all the time.

That's enough of that.

That's enough of this.

I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore

If you read last blog, you learnt all about France, a country famed for it's abundance of sharp downhill bends and gravel. I'm so good at the words that I forgot to tell you all about the pictures. Sit back, relax, buckle up and enjoy the fun that is having other people show you their holiday photos.

In France there are cars, tractors and even beautifully framed silos. If you're very good then your nice Dad might let you use his camera while he's driving around.

Claire (little sister) has gone to Cambridge. Everybody thinks she's very clever. 

It's the end of an era for the Lovell family, Mummy and Daddy are by themselves at home with only Ruth Lovell for company. We've all sort of flown the nest. If we all become teachers then we can be at home together at holiday time forever and ever. Maybe my parents can retire to Sheffield and I can also retire and spend the whole time climbing with Father. I guess Mum can keep working so that we can still eat food.

I'm going to a Halloween party (don't tell my mum) a la maison de mon meilleur ami Paul Wallace. I want to dress up as Ned Ryerson, but I don't know how I'll do the jacket.

I get quite excited thinking about pretending to be Ned Ryerson for an entire evening.

"Who are you supposed to be?"

"Now don't tell me you don't remember me, because I sure as heck fire remember you!" 

Actually now that I've written that down I've started to think it might become pretty boring pretty fast. Maybe I should make little business cards. The fluffy collar is the hardest bit.

My course is pretty interesting now. I'm learning about robot arms and teaching robots to play football (eventually). Let's look at that wizard cat again.

Next time I might just do wizard cat, no words. Need more gifs.

J'ai mal a la tete.

Let me tell you a story. If you’ve seen me in the past month then you’ve probably heard it already because I think it’s much more exciting than it really is.

About a month ago I was having a dream; I can’t remember what about. I woke in a state of unusual bliss. I was outside. It was sunny and I was nestled within the fold of an unusually comfortable ditch. It was a nice place to wake up, but I couldn’t remember falling asleep there. I hoisted my head a little to take in my surroundings. It felt heavy. Somebody had left a bike at my feet. Ignorant bliss began to give way to disquieting curiosity.

“Dad?” I asked. It felt as though my father should have been there, but my childish plea yielded no response. I decided to get up, and managed on the third try. A dog was barking, then a man was saying "Bonjour?".

“Uhh – Bonjour.” I said to the man. He was on the other side of a short fence. Why was the man talking French? 

"Um..." I said. I felt funny. I put my hand to my head and looked around.

wow

I spent about five seconds basically by myself in the middle of the French countryside with absolutely no idea how I came to be there. It was immensely surreal and a little bit scary. By the time ten seconds had elapsed, I was beginning to piece together a 'banged my head' theory, and I think I even managed to say "Parle vou anglais?" to my new only friend in the world. After that my Dad arrived and rescued me. There was a short car ride, of which I have no recollection, followed by lots of molly coddling and about two days of lying down all the time and showering with the door unlocked.

What else happened over summer?

I turned 21 and became a proper adult

I stroked a French kitten

I went to some very fun birthday parties

I'm really good at kubb

Also I went into the peak district for a couple of days with my course mates and now we're all best friends forever. We climbed a mountain and everything.

I'm now the proud owner of a Tilley hat (big thanks birthday benefactors). Stuff really can make you happy.

I've basically forgotten about everything else that happened because I was so excited about falling off my bike.

Hopefully blog will be more regular / substantial / conventionally formatted in future.

goodbye